People interested in L&E, law reform and development, might be interested in this call for papers published by the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. I copy the background section below:
"The model of the relationship of law to economics provided by the current "Law and Economics" school makes certain assumptions about the role of regulation in the promotion of international development. It views legal reform as aiming at implementing a particular view of the market, and free market democracy, consistent with neoclassical assumptions. It therefore uses law reform to aim at the creation and preservation of market supporting institutions centred on property rights and contract. This model has been applied to various transitional and developing countries under the auspices of the Washington Consensus.
However, it has proved an insufficient basis for economic and legal reforms, and is unable to explain the wide variations in the impact of law and institutional reform across countries. These variations highlight the importance of the broader institutional and economic structure, point to the existence of path dependence and reveal the complex nature of concepts such as property rights or contracts. Despite this criticism, however, interpretations of the relationship of law to economics that rely only on the neoclassical framework continue to define the thinking of major international financial institutions."
T.
